- My name is Beth Schmidt and my organization is
called Wishbone.org. I started Wishbone to actually
send low-income students on these after-school and summer programs that are otherwise pretty
much cost-prohibitive for that demographic. I was teaching tenth grade English in South Central Los Angeles. And I said, "Go research any after-school or summer program in
the Los Angeles area." And part of the research paper was to match a passion to
this after-school program or summer program that the
student wanted to attend. There were about thirteen papers that started with the sentence "Nobody's ever asked
me what my passion is." And so I'm sitting there
heartbroken, thinking (laughing) I have to send
these kids on these programs. But I was on a teacher's
salary at the time, so I can't afford to send them all. I actually ran a marathon
to raise the money to send seven of them. Took the teacher room and
I stapled together packets of my students' wishes. They each wrote a paragraph,
an excerpt from their essay, about why they wanted to
attend the program they chose. I took a photo of each
student and I mailed it out to friends and family. I like to err on the side of transparency just because I think it
motivates people to give more. Any donor wants to know where
their dollars are going. That was really part of the
whole design for Wishbone. People could actually see what the dream for the student was, and
they could see the price tag to say, "OK, my donation is
actually making a difference." So it all started with the teacher packet. We had one student who
is taking flight lessons. I think he did over 60 hours
this summer of flight school with Wishbone. We have other students who
want to go to ID Tech Camp and learn how to code. We have some students who want to learn about stem cell science. These kids actually come
back into their school day and become the experts
on whatever they've done. It's powerful, what can happen
within a single community when one kid comes back
and has that a-ha moment. It's incredibly powerful to
see peer groups come together and realize I can do that too. It took about a year to really think about whether I was going to
pursue this full-time. And then I dove right in. I realized I didn't want
to run a marathon again. That was the year I said,
"I need to figure out a new, sustainable method for
sending kids on programs." There's very humbling moments
where you're constantly learning and iterating. I remember when Wishbone earned it's first $25,000 and I thought,
"The organization's made." The you realize, oh boy, this isn't gonna get me very far. So it's a roller coaster. But a piece that's unwavering
is your solid belief that this is an issue and there's
a specific solution to it. So for Wishbone, it's really clear. There's an opportunity gap. Low-income kids are prohibited from path-changing opportunities. And the solution is to get
them those opportunities. That is the piece you can not waver on. The future of philanthropy, I believe, is definitely through technology. We have so much capacity
to be able to give online. And it's one of the last fields, actually, to come online.